As some of you may recall, I proposed the idea of the "Formation" game mechanic a while back. This is where if players move into certain specific positions your party gets certain benefits.

Command
No inherent effect. Many Paragon skills, especially those that protect your allies or increase your tactical position on the battlefield, become more effective with higher Command.

Since we will be testing all this on Friday, I'm wondering:
"Tactical Position"... what do you guys think? Is this the "Formation" we've been looking for? And what are you looking forward to or dreading about this?

Reikai

26-07-2006, 04:06

perhaps paragon's have skills that control all other party member's movements until a certian position is met? *Wars up front, middle line in... middle :/, and monks/backline at back...*?

p0rn

26-07-2006, 05:17

actually taking control away from other players wouldn't be very fun at all :sad:

My prediction is that this "tactical position" skills will be more like an elementalist's wards or necromancer wells, where team mates in a specific area recieve some sort of buff. If a paragon could cast it on enemies it would be a very good way for the class to direct the flow of battle

MrRock

26-07-2006, 06:05

Yea, I think the wells/wards theory is the most correct. Though, moving other (Idiot) players who are not sure what they should be doing can be good/bad.

Azgalon

26-07-2006, 06:17

Probably a skill/skills called something like Advantageous Terrain giving movementbonus or defencebonus and similar skills.

A leadership-skill called "Attack As One!" giving damagebonus +1 to all allies etc and so forth.

Will be interesting to see what they have come up with!

Sectus

26-07-2006, 06:26

Oh, I know! Ian Boyd were talking about tactical formations and drew these really nice ASCII drawings for how to manage your formations. It's quite obvious Anet hired him and made him design the Paragon class.

CÚrilia

26-07-2006, 08:29

Moved to Paragon Forum...

Leese Blacks

26-07-2006, 13:26

perhaps it depends on the party member's position relative to the paragon. So characters standing in front of him get the buff, or characters behind him, or characters the paragon is currently looking at...

Goldfish God

26-07-2006, 15:36

It might be as simple as a mechanic similar to Shockwave damage.
Adjacent get +X bonus, nearby get +X bonus, in ear shot gets +X bonus. So Adjacent gets 3 times (3X) the bonus ear-shot (X) gets.

hotdogtesting

26-07-2006, 16:38

actually taking control away from other players wouldn't be very fun at all :sad:

I'm not too sure what you mean by this. There has been no indication that a player HAS to be part of the command...

WingspanTT

26-07-2006, 16:45

There may be skills that give bonuses to attacking a called target. that would PWN SO HARD

rangerjon

26-07-2006, 23:32

OK I can see this

*just before a big mob with boss*
paragon: ok team hexagon formation!! this time, we'll put 1a and 3b of triangle formation FORWARDS!
warrior, monk, necro, ranger, etc: wtf?
*paragon leaves due to lack of understanding the terms...

yea this wouldn't work, no matter how hard you try there will always be that 1 rebel who won't get into position, or that 1 "invinsible" wammo who charges in without a "formation"

although what leese blacks said makes sense. what would be interesting are buffs or de-buffs that work on a certain profession.

Tru Reptile

27-07-2006, 00:37

This reminds me of how much trouble the Bards in FFXI would have when idiot players wouldn't stand in the right spot and get hit with the wrong song buff. Considering Guild Wars is a much faster paced game I doubt it will be specific to what order/formation party members have to stand. I'm sure it would be just within a radius like wards.

If people really do have to stand in a specific spot/formation then expect alot of Paragons to be pulling their hair out as most GW players are, let's face it, not too bright.

It'll probably be something like:

*Paragon uses Haste*

Players within ear-shot will recieve the effect of Haste and attack 15% faster for 10 seconds in melee.

That's what I think anyways.

duward

27-07-2006, 06:34

i could see shouts that affect others only .. it excluded the paragon .. low energy buff everyone else but you ..